ISBN : 9782296065321
GLOBAL ISLAM: BETWEEN FUNDAMENTALISM AND COSMOPOLITANISM
Jocelyne Cesari
Islam and Cultural Globalization There is no need to discover that Islam is global. In its own conception, Islam has always been a global religion through the concept of the Ummah, or Community of Believers. Even the nation-states born out of the decolonization process have not completely dissolved the Ummah's power as a locus of identification; nor has the division between Sunni and Shi'a Islam—not to mention other sects—fully managed to eradicate the powerful idea of the Ummah. Unlike Protestantism, in which the diversification of interpretations of religious belief led to the founding of separate communities and the proliferation of sects, the unity of the Ummah as an imagined and constantly renewed community based on an understanding of a shared fate remains strong. Today, conditions for communication and the free movement of...